A View Over the Bridge

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Introduction

The Play "A view over the bridge" is written by Arthur Miller and is set in Red hook district, Brooklyn in the 1950's, it is about a tragedy involving immigrants, four of the characters are illegal, and two are legal. The characters are very poor; they live in a tenement apartment. Beatrice and Eddie are husband and wife. Arthur Miller makes the last scene in Act one dramatic by creating tension, using many great different techniques an example pf this is dramatic irony, the language used by the characters. Arthur Miller wrote this play because he used to work with the longshoremen and knew what the life would be as an Italian American so he decided to make a play about this type of drama. Alfieri is a bridge between the audience and the characters who plays a big part in the play he is the chorus of the play and tells the audience what is going on throughout the play. Eddies flaw is he is a macho character and has to keep his emotions within himself. This is important in the play because he keeps this flaw throughout the flaw which makes the audience understand more about the play. The last scene in Act one was set in the tenement apartment, in the living room. The characters are Eddie Beatrice, Catherine, Rodolpho and Marco. ...read more.

Middle

his wife is not a loyal woman to him Eddie knows this will get to Marco psychologically and he wants Rodolpho and Marco to go back to Italy because he does not want Catherine to be with Rodolpho. The tension between the characters are that Marco is getting annoyed with Eddie with his childish comments to Rodolpho and himself and the audience is just waiting to see what Marco is going to do. Eddie is getting aggravated throughout the play and reminds Marco and Rodolpho of their reasons for coming to America, The reason they came to America is for the Family back in Italy where they need money. Eddie is trying to threaten Marco and Rodolpho as he could easily go to the immigration officers and tell them there are illegal immigrants he is doing this because he does not want Catherine to be with Rodolpho as Eddie is getting jealous of them two always being together, as soon as Rodolpho gets married Rodolpho would be a legal American Italian citizen. Throughout the scene Marco has changed his acts with Eddie, firstly Marco used to take all the nonsense that Eddie gave but now Marco has had enough and now he will retaliate to Eddie's comments no further. Eddie says "I mean you know- they count the kids and there's a couple extra than when they left" Eddie is trying to insult Marco and his wife saying she is having sexual relationships with other men. ...read more.

Conclusion

also Eddie does not know how he is feeling about Catherine, also Catherine wouldn't know whose side she would be on if something went wrong between Eddie and Rodolpho. The scene fits into the rest of the play the audience know the Tension is going to rise throughout the whole play which is going to cause something tragic to happen like death. There also are few similarities in scene 1 and 2. There was no tension at the start of the play but the tension started to build up as more characters are added into the play. In my opinion the tension built up when Rodolpho entered. The tension was slowly building up and by the end of the play all the tension that was built ended up in a tragedy death. In the scene dramatic tension is mainly caused by Eddie, it is due to the fact that Rodolpho likes Catherine which Eddie likes as well. This causes tension because Eddie tries to repeatedly insult Rodolpho to provoke him eventually. Eddie tries to beat Rodolpho for example like beating him in a sparing match. To show Catherine he is a bigger man. This is like the main structure for the tension. The dramatic climax at the end of the act is when Marco glances at Eddie with full eye contact whilst holding the chair with 1 hand which Eddie could not do. It also shows that there is a challenge for Eddie. ...read more.

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